WASHINGTON – Morgan Ortagus once called President-elect Donald Trump’s behavior “disgusting” and suggested he had the temperament of a “middle school pubescent boy.”
Now she’s going to work for him. Again.
Trump announced Friday that he has – reluctantly, it seems – chosen Ortagus to serve as his deputy special envoy for Middle East peace. A Trump critic turned defender, Ortagus was the State Department spokeswoman for three years during his first term.
“Early on Morgan fought me for three years, but hopefully has learned her lesson,” Trump said in a statement announcing the appointment.
Trump appeared to suggest he was appointing Ortagus only because she has strong support among his fellow Republicans.
“These things usually don’t work out,” Trump said, “but she has strong Republican support, and I’m not doing this for me, I’m doing it for them. Let’s see what happens.”
Trump said he hopes Ortagus will be an asset to Steve Witkoff, whom he has chosen as his special envoy to the Middle East.
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Before reinventing herself as a Trump supporter and working for his State Department, Ortagus worked as a national security contributor to Fox News. A volunteer for Republican Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign in 2016, Ortagus was a frequent Trump critic during that year’s presidential primaries.
During an appearance on the cable network in 2016, Ortagus criticized Trump what she called his “isolationist foreign policy approach.”
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Earlier that same year, she suggested Trump’s temperament made him unsuitable for the Oval Office.
“You have somebody who makes fun of people with mental and physical disabilities,” she said during a Fox News radio interview. “That’s disgusting. There’s no other way around it.”
“Quite frankly, I don’t want someone with the temperament of a middle school pubescent boy in the president’s office,” she said in the same interview.
Besides her work with the State Department, Ortagus has served as the public affairs officer for United States Agency for International Development (USAID) under President George W. Bush. She also worked as an intelligence analyst for the Treasury Department and served as the department’s deputy attaché to Saudi Arabia during the administration of President Barack Obama.
Trump endorsed Ortagus when she ran for a Tennessee congressional seat in 2022, but the Tennessee Republican Party later removed her from the primary ballot because she had only recently moved to the state.
Michael Collins covers the White House. Follow him on X @mcollinsNEWS.
